I want more, more, more: Thinking about rarity and beer

In a few weeks, I’m going to be travelling to California, and while I’m there I’m going to make sure that I pick up a few beers that I can’t get here in New York. Specifically, I’m going to be grabbing a bunch of Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, an imperial IPA that many consider to be one of the best in the world. I researched methods by which to bring the Pliny back, and I even considered buying a “wine shipper” (essentially a box with foam) to bring home a bunch.

This got me thinking about why I was planning all of these intricate (and expensive) ways for bringing beer home with me. After all, there are great beers readily available here, including many great imperial IPAs.

I suppose it has something to do with rarity. It is in our nature to want what we don’t have or what we can’t get regularly, and there is no exception made for beer. PtE is a rare beer here in New York, and I’ve only had the chance to try it once, so I want more.

I had similar feelings about Founders KBS after trying it for the first time. I wanted more, but I couldn’t get more than one 12oz bottle. Though KBS is rare, KBS and Pliny are rare for two different reasons. That got me thinking, and I realized that there are two main types of rarity when it comes to beer.

Situational / Unavoidable Rarity

This type of rarity occurs when a beer’s production and/or distribution results in a beer being unavailable in certain areas. This is the case with Pliny the Elder. Because Russian River doesn’t distribute to New York, it is a rare beer here. If you live in San Diego San Francisco (thanks for the correction, J Mac), for example, this isn’t the case.

Another good example of a beer that exemplifies this type of rarity is another highly sought IPA: Heady Topper by the Alchemist. Because of their production ability, the Alchemist doesn’t distribute outside of northern Vermont, an even smaller area than is the case with Pliny. If you walk into their store on most days, though, you’ll find cases and cases of the stuff, and it is readily available on tap at surrounding bars.

Manufactured Rarity

This type of rarity occurs when a brewer intentionally holds back production of their product in order to generate hype or demand. This type of rarity can be frustrating because of the fact that it perceived that a brewery could just increase production to up the supply in order to meet the demand, but that poses its own set of difficulties. Often times, these beers have their own “days” when they’re released, and the hype surrounding them is enormous.

Pliny the Younger, the triple IPA version of Pliny the Elder from Russian River, is an example of this type of beer, and it is produced only once a year. Russian River has become so strict with their distribution of this beer that they no longer even allow growlers of it to be sold because of the (justified) fear that those growlers will be sold on eBay for a massive markup. (Plus, if they don’t sell growlers, there can be no chance of an impostor beer being sold as PtY on eBay.)

According to them, PtY “is extremely difficult, time and space consuming, and very expensive to make,” so they don’t produce it more often. This is difficult for some consumers to swallow because there isn’t a process limitation, really, as there is with beers that are aged.

In-Between Cases

And that brings us to the in-between examples. Founders KBS is cave-aged for a year before being sold, so there are limitations to how much of it could realistically produced. The brewers take one week out of the year and produce nothing but KBS for sale the following year. While some just argue “hey, make it for two weeks,” this could result in problems fulfilling their outstanding orders on their other products, so it isn’t necessarily feasible. That, and they might run out of room in the “cave” in which they age KBS.

In conclusion, it’s frustrating when you’re unable to get the beer that you want, especially if it is being held back from production, but it’s important to realize why you’re unable to get the beer you want. While I realize that it might not help, especially as you’re cursing the heavens as you drain that last drop of KBS, it might put some things in perspective.

(While writing this post, I’m drinking a Sculpin IPA by Ballast Point. It is a 7% ABV IPA that, interestingly enough, fellow “Beer Nut” Chad and others chose as their favorite in a blind taste test between Sculpin, Heady Topper, and Pliny the Elder. You can see their video here. It’s a very nice IPA.)

11 Responses

Isn’t a large amount of this problem related to New York State (and likely other states) requiring every brewery to pay for a permit in their state in order for that beer to be sold there? Without that regulation a distributor here could arrange to buy a truckload of California products and have them shipped here. But to sell Pliny the Elder here they would need Russian River to pay for a permit here which makes no sense for them. I think this was the law that ended the regular occurrence of Shebeens at Mahar’s once someone turned them in to the SLA for serving beers from breweries that were perfectly legal but weren’t licensed in NY.

The post-prohibtion alcohol laws in this country are still very confusing to this day. From what I can tell, every individual alcoholic product must be approved by the alcohol board or other such bureaucracy of every state in which it’s sold.

I believe wholesalers can get a license for a product on a brewery’s behalf. For example, a lot of out-of-state and overseas beer is sold in NYC and not the rest of the state, so the distributors down there are responsible for licensing those types of products.

But you can’t go out of state or overseas, buy a bunch of beer, and then sell it at a bar or restaurant if it isn’t licensed in that state. From a legal standpoint, that seems pretty straightforward.

Mostly what it comes down to is brewing capacity. Russian River isn’t sold in New York because they can barely keep up with the demand in the few states they’re already in. Dogfish Head has actually pulled out of several states because they literally couldn’t fill their orders anymore.

Thankfully, we are starting to see a lot of west coast breweries opening satellite facilities on the east coast (many of them in Asheville, NC). I’d love to see some of our breweries go west. This would help alleviate a lot of these rare beer shortages and bring down prices.

That’s roughly right. The only state in which breweries can interact directly with retailers is Washington. In every other state, the “three-tier” distribution system is in place, which forces breweries and retailers to interact through an intermediary (distributor). The whole system is

As a huge IPA fan, I have tried countless IPAs and PtE is FAR from my favorite… It is certainly good, but I have no idea how it became known to be one of the world’s best. Far from it. We have much better contenders for World’s best right in the northeast. Heady Topper by the Alchemist, for example, is much better than PtE.

PtE WAS the worlds best mostly because it was one of the FIRST great DIPA’s…it still has that mythic quality as being the best still, however, like you said Heady Topper along with many other big IPA’s have come along and in many opinions surpassed the quality of PtE. Any Hill Farmstead IPA, in my opinions blows away PtE…and any other IPA, DIPA, for that matter.

RE: Big Daddy D…very true, I have purchased PtE and other Russian River beers online whenever I want. There are dozens of websites that will legally ship beer to NY.